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December, 2018:
The losers of 2018
Allow me to point you to the Observer's list of six Texas political players who lost power in 2018. I'd call it five-sixths of a good list, plus one entry I don't quite understand.
3) Bexar County Democrats
Want to understand the dysfunction and ineptitude of Texas Democrats? Look no further than Bexar County, where the local party is dead broke and mired with infighting. It's a small miracle that Democrats were able to flip 24 county seats in November. But they still managed to bungle several other potential pickups.
After felon Carlos Uresti resigned from his San Antonio state Senate seat this year, Pete Gallego and the local party apparatus managed to lose the special election runoff, handing over a predominately Hispanic district that Democrats have held for 139 years to Republican Pete Flores. Ultimately, losing that seat allowed Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick to keep his GOP supermajority in the upper chamber, as Democrats picked up two Dallas senate districts in November.
On top of that, San Antonio native Gina Ortiz Jones narrowly lost her bid to oust "moderate maverick" Will Hurd in the 23rd Congressional District. In a blue wave year, the perennial swing district that stretches from San Antonio to the western border should have been a gimme. But Ortiz Jones ultimately lost by about 1,250 votes — a margin that a functioning local party in the most important part of the district easily could have made up.
Then there's Julián Castro, the Alamo City's hometown hero. Along with his twin brother, the supposed face of the Democratic Party's future decided to sit out the most important election cycle of his career because he didn't want to risk sullying his profile with a statewide loss in Texas. Then he watched from the sidelines as some nobody from El Paso became a political phenom and now sits atop the 2020 presidential wishlists.
Castro also wants to run for president and is scrambling to lay down his marker in a crowded Democratic primary field, as if nothing has changed since he became a party darling in the late 2000s. The thing is, political power doesn't last if you try to bottle it up to use at the most opportune time.
My first thought is, do you mean the Bexar County Democratic Party? The Democratic voters of Bexar County? Some number of elected officials and other insider types who hail from Bexar County? Every other item on the list is either an individual or a concise and easily-defined group. I don't know who exactly author Justin Miller is throwing rocks at, so I'm not sure how to react to it.
Then there's also the matter of the examples cited for why this nebulous group deserves to be scorned. Miller starts out strong with the Pete Flores-Pete Gallego special election fiasco. Let us as always look at some numbers:
SD19 runoff, Bexar County – Flores 12,027, Gallego 10,259
SD19 election, Bexar County – Flores 3,301, Gallego 3,016, Gutierrez 4,272
SD19 2016 election, Bexar County – Uresti 89,034, Flores 54,989
Clearly, in two out of three elections the Bexar County part of SD19 was key to the Democrats. Carlos Uresti's margin of victory in 2016 was about 37K votes, which as you can see came almost entirely from Bexar. The first round of the special election had the two top Dems getting nearly 70% of the vote in Bexar. It all fell apart in the runoff. You can blame Pete Gallego and his campaign for this, you can blame Roland Gutierrez for not endorsing and stumping for Gallego, you can blame the voters themselves. A little clarity, that's all I ask.
As for the Hurd-Ortiz Jones matchup, the numbers do not bear out the accusation.
CD23 2018 election, Bexar County – Hurd 55,191, Ortiz Jones 50,517, Corvalan 2,260
CD23 2016 election, Bexar County – Hurd 59,406, Gallego 45,396, Corvalan 6,291
Gallego trailed Hurd by 14K votes in Bexar, while Ortiz Jones trailed him by less than 5K. She got five thousand more votes in Bexar than Gallego did. Hurd had a bigger margin in Medina County and did better in the multiple small counties, while Ortiz Jones didn't do as well in El Paso and Maverick counties. They're much more to blame, if one must find blame, for her loss than Bexar is.
As for the Castros, I don't think there was room for both of them to join the 2018 ticket. Joaquin Castro, as I have noted before, is right now in a pretty good position as a four-term Congressperson in a Dem-majority House. I hardly see how one could say he was wrong for holding onto that, with the bet that the House would flip. Julian could have run for Governor, but doing so would have meant not running for President in 2020, and might have ended his career if he'd lost to the surprisingly popular and extremely well-funded Greg Abbott. Would Beto plus Julian have led to better results for Texas Dems than just Beto did? It's certainly possible, though as always it's easy to write your own adventure when playing the counterfactual game. I agree with the basic premise that political power is more ephemeral than anyone wants to admit. I think they both made reasonable and defensible decisions for themselves, and it's not at all clear they'd be better off today if they'd chosen to jump into a 2018 race. Life is uncertain, you know?
Now how much would you pay for that emergency room visit?
Guess higher, and it is a guess because who knows what you'll wind up getting charged for it.
Fifteen months after Texas enacted a law to bring transparency to the state's for-profit free-standing emergency rooms, many of the facilities continue to send mixed messages about insurance coverage that could expose unsuspecting patients to surprise medical bills.
A Houston Chronicle review of websites representing the 52 free-standing emergency rooms in the Houston area shows a pattern in which many of the facilities prominently advertise that they "accept" all major private insurance. Some even list the insurers' names and logos.
But often tucked under pull-down tabs or at the bottom of the page is a notice that the facilities are outside the networks of those insurers, followed by a reassurance that under the Texas insurance code, network status does not matter in emergency treatment, implying patients needn't worry about coverage.
What the websites fail to disclose is that out-of-network status can result in insurance reimbursements far below the charges, leaving patients on the hook for the remainder of the bill — sometimes thousands of dollars.
"The word 'accept' means something very different to them than to the consumer, and they know that when they write their websites," said Stacey Pogue, senior health policy analyst at the Austin-based Center for Public Policy Priorities. "They do not tell the rest of the story."
For example, many of the Houston-area facilities advertise that they accept Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Texas, the state's largest insurer. But the Chronicle's review found that only five — about 10 percent — are in that insurer's network.
Those findings are consistent with a statewide report by AARP Texas, to be released Monday at a state Senate committee hearing, that found 77 percent of the state's 215 free-standing emergency rooms said they "take" or "accept" Blue Cross and Blue Shield insurance, but were out-of-network.
Free-standing emergency rooms defend their websites, describing concerns raised by advocacy groups and Texas lawmakers as manufactured outrage.
"I don't see a problem with saying they 'accept,'" said Dr. Carrie de Moor, CEO of Code 3 Emergency Partners, a Frisco-based network of free-standing emergency rooms, urgent care clinics and a telemedicine program. She insisted that patients understand that accepting someone's insurance is different from being in that company's network.
It may seem like a hair-splitting distinction, but it can carry high costs, health policy experts said.
Obvious point #1: It's ridiculous that we live in a society where basic medical needs, including emergency care, are not met. It's utterly scandalous that prior to the Affordable Care Act, there were thousands upon thousands of bankruptcies caused every year by medical issues. Plenty of other countries have figured this out. Our standard of medical care is no better than theirs. It's just more expensive.
Obvious point #2: For those who believe in the power of the free market, why is it that medical services, especially those tied to emergency and hospital care, are so utterly opaque when it comes to their pricing? Think of all the other goods and services you buy. In nearly all of them, you know up front how much it's going to cost. That is universally untrue for the vast majority of medical services, from basics like painkillers and bandages to anaesthesia and specialist fees to higher-end products like EKGs and colonoscopies. There's no such thing as a free market with unknowable prices. You want to move towards something like a free market in health care, fix that.
Weekend link dump for December 30
"But nothing was more telling about this majority than the way it dismissed the issue it rode in on as soon as Trump replaced Obama. So before House Republicans come apologizing again for their past mistakes and begging for another chance, it's important to emphasize right now: Republican have not, do not, and will not care about deficit reduction except as a rhetorical ploy for stymieing a Democratic government."
"Don't go putting the Carlton Dance in your games without respecting Carlton."
Churches are easy targets for financial crimes because their finances are allowed to be completely opaque.
"Future-proofing" is how you say "climate change" if you're a Texas Republican.
TV stars we said goodbye to in 2018.
"[Paul] Ryan's entire thinking about the subject of poverty is shaped by his deep commitment to a fundamentally false premise: the notion that anti-poverty programs have failed."
The year 536 was a very bad time to be alive.
RIP, Audrey Geisel, film producer and widow of Theodore "Dr. Seuss" Geisel.
"I also get bombarded with direct messages from men who want to sleep with me but those are usually sprinkled with DMs from men who think I'm a degenerate who deserves to be dead. Sometimes I get both from the same guy."
"The New York Times reviewed hundreds of documents including police reports, bank records and investigator notes from a decade of mass shootings. Many of the killers built their stockpiles of high-powered weapons with the convenience of credit. No one was watching."
The worst political predictions of 2018. That could easily be a much longer list.
RIP, Richard Overton, nation's oldest WWII veteran.
"At first blush, this impasse over what divides a wall from a fence might look frivolous. But the semantic controversy is rooted in a substantive one. Simply put, the reason Congress can't agree on what Trump's wall is is that Trump can't (honestly) say what it's for."
"In our view, that action clearly constituted a criminal attempt by the president to obstruct justice, one that is even more clear-cut than the president's prior attempts to thwart the federal investigation into Russia's 2016 election interference."
Here are your Golden Dukes winners for 2018.
How the conversation about guns changed in 2018.
Here come the new judges
They're going to be fine. Seriously, everyone chill out.
[Frank] Aguilar said some of his Democratic colleagues may not have a lot of judicial experience, but most have had long careers as lawyers and have the experience they need to improve the system.
That sentiment has been a constant among the new Democrat judges. In the days after the election, Dedra Davis, who was elected to civil bench, said the new judges would be using a "wheel" to appoint attorneys at random instead of continuing a system of judges appointing a small roster of attorneys they know.
"A little more fairness, a little more impartiality, and a little more equality is coming, and not everybody's happy about that," she said. "Lawyers who made $500,000 a year from their relationship with a judge who always gave them appointments aren't going to see that anymore."
In the days after the election, attorneys who had been elevated to the bench were busy winding up their practices while judges who lost were looking at their options.
Josh Hill, a newly elected Democrat criminal court judge, said there is a learning curve in any new job. He expects some "hiccups and speedbumps" around the courts, but said he and the other new judges are fair and will work hard to improve the system.
"I don't have any reason to think that any of the incoming judges will be incapable of handling the task. I think they'll do fine," he said. "Ultimately, you're going to see a more progressive criminal justice system."
Hill noted that some of the departing judges came to work late and did not seem to be diligent about getting things done with their dockets. He said practical experience and a strong work ethic are more important than the belief that judges are somehow "better" qualified just because they've been on the bench longer.
"Some of them did a great job and some did a terrible job and some were just in-between," he said. "It just comes down to the individual and what they're willing to put into it and how hard they're willing to work."
JoAnne Musick , felony division chief at the Harris County District Attorney's Office, said new judges are elected every other year and they all seem to learn the job.
"It takes them four to six weeks to get their feet wet and then they're off and running," she said.
Many criminal defense attorneys agreed.
"I've seen so many transitions and everybody figures it out. It's going to be fine," said Cheryl Irvin, a longtime criminal defense lawyer who has practiced since 1980. "Nobody's going home who should be going to prison. Nothing like that is happening and anybody who says anything like that is just immature."
Yeah, pretty much. I know it's de rigeur to dump on the system we have of partisan judicial elections, and for sure there are some departing judges who would have been fine to keep on the bench. But let's be honest, appointment systems will pick some duds, too. Every company that has ever hired an employee has hired people who just didn't work out for one reason or another. Maybe an appointment system, if properly built and maintained, would do a better job of picking winners than the system we have now. But all those good judges whose loss everyone is now lamenting were chosen by this same partisan election system we have. It's not like nobody good got elected.
And hey, guess what: The Legislature is about to be in session. Everyone who believes the system we have for electing judges is terrible is welcomed and encouraged to lobby their legislators to design and implement something better. Come up with a plan, get a legislator to sponsor it, and go from there. There's never been a better time to turn complaints into action. And if six months from now we make it to sine die without such a bill appearing on anyone's radar, I'll know how serious the complainers were about their grievances.
Orlando Sanchez's bizarre press conference
What a weird thing.
Orlando Sanchez
It was an absolutely wild afternoon for Harris County Treasurer Orlando Sanchez. He planned to have a news conference across the street from the HISD administration building, but things didn't go as planned.
Protestors showed up and completely disrupted Sanchez's news conference. When he tried to get it started, the group would chant things like, 'Go away, TEA' and 'You got voted out.'
Things really got heated when he was answering one of our questions. Someone from the group ran up and dumped water on him.
Someone from Sanchez's team confronted the man. He ended up on the ground and police were called. Both sides claimed they were assaulted.
The news conference was supposed to be for Sanchez to call for the state to take over HISD.
"Taxpayers are fed up and it's time for the governor and the Texas Education Agency to step up and make sure that children in HISD, which 83 percent of them are minority, get an education," said Sanchez.
"To have somebody like that step on my toes like that when I have sacrificed so much for these kids, yeah, it's emotional," said HISD Board President Rhonda Skillern. "It is because it's personal. These kids mean a lot to me; not just my five but all 215,000."
Click over to see pictures and video. Far as I can tell, the only coverage of this fiasco has come from the TV stations; I've not seen anything in the Chron as yet.
Let me say up front that whoever poured water on Sanchez is an idiot, and what he did sure sounds like assault to me. It's also terrible strategy from a public relations perspective. Sanchez's purpose for calling the press conference was ridiculous on its face, and would have been easy to dismiss on its merits. Anyone who felt the need to attack Sanchez physically is someone who has no faith in their own political position.
Why do I say that Sanchez's purpose is ridiculous? The law is clear that the authority of the TEA to step in only occurs after the schools fail to meet state standards. We won't have that data for several months, a fact that everyone knows. It is entirely possible that the four schools in question, which were all granted one-year waivers due to the effects of Hurricane Harvey, could meet standards this year, as the other schools that had originally been under scrutiny and which did not get Harvey waivers did. One could easily argue that by making this needless and premature call for a TEA takeover, Sanchez is expressing a complete lack of faith in the students at the four schools. That's an insult to them and their parents and teachers. Maybe he had some qualifiers and weasel words in his prepared text, but still, the message is clear: Orlando Sanchez expects you to fail, and so he wants the consequences of your failure to begin now.
One also can't help but notice that Orlando Sanchez, who just got voted out of a cushy elected position where he was basically invisible for twelve years and has never before expressed any opinions about education or ideas about how to improve it, is jumping up and waving his arms in front of Greg Abbott at a time when he really needs something to do. It's a clear grab for attention at a time when the news cycle is quiet and he can still call it in his capacity as an elected official. There's also the rumors that Sanchez is prepping to run for Mayor (again). No such thing as bad publicity, am I right?
Finally, there will surely be litigation over the process of replacing an elected board with an appointed one – for sure, there's a Voting Rights Act complaint to be made. There were lawsuits over the closure of North Forest ISD and La Marque ISD, and while the state prevailed in each of them, the situation with HISD, which is a much bigger district with many successful schools and is financially solvent, is vastly different. The state may well prevail in any litigation that will occur, but it will take time. There's also the very real possibility that the Lege could modify the law in question that delays or makes less likely a TEA takeover. The point here is that in every way, this was way premature, and served to do nothing more than call attention to Orlando Sanchez. On that score at least, mission accomplished.
Paxton prosecutors take their shot at a do-over
Best mugshot ever
In a fiery filing that amounts to a legal Hail Mary, the attorneys appointed to prosecute Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton implored the state's highest criminal court to take the unusual step of considering their case again because last month's opinion yielded "a patently absurd result."
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruled in November that a six-figure payment originally approved for the special prosecutors was outside legal limits — a move that boosted Paxton and threatened to derail the case against him, as the prosecutors had indicated they might withdraw if they could not be paid. A month later, the prosecutors have asked the court to reconsider their decision in a crucial case "where the 'x' axis of justice and the 'y' axis of politics intersect."
Rehearing, they argued in a filing last week, is critical for ensuring that the high court's proceedings "appear fair to all who observe them." [Read the filing here]
In the Dec. 21 filing, prosecutor Brian Wice wrote that the prosecutors "would never have accepted the formidable task of prosecuting the Texas Attorney General over the last three-plus years had they been able to look into the future and discern that their pay would come within a coat of paint of minimum wage."
From the opening sentence, the 18-page filing doesn't mince words.
"If you're fortunate enough to be Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, you can lawfully create and endow a defense fund to pay for an armada of top-flight legal talent that most defendants can only dream of to defend yourself against three felony offenses," Wice wrote.
In the motion for rehearing, which includes references to Atticus Finch, Shakespeare, Gilbert & Sullivan and the impending "Sword of Damocles," the prosecutors implore the state's highest criminal court to take the unusual step of considering their case again because last month's opinion yields "a patently absurd result" that would pay the special prosecutors "unconscionable" rates.
Letting the ruling stand, Wice argued, would allow any local government in Texas "to derail what it sees as an unjust prosecution by de-funding it." And that type of funding dispute can be influenced by major political players, he suggested.
"Make no mistake," he wrote. "While it was the Commissioners who prevailed in this Court, Paxton first recognized that the best, indeed, the only way to derail his prosecution was to de-fund it by challenging [prosecutors'] fees three years ago."
See here and here for the background. I mean, the prosecutors are 100% right on the merits, and they lay it out with utter clarity. I maintain that the Legislature can and should fix this by making the state pick up the tab for prosecutions like this, but that won't help here, even if we could be sure that a bill to address this would pass. We need the Court to do the right thing, which they failed to do the first time around. It's either that or they show that they don't care about the law when one of their own is on the sharp end of it.
Another straight-ticket truther
Hello, outgoing Fort Bend DA John Healey!
When John Healey began his career as a young prosecutor in Fort Bend County in the early 1980s, Ronald Reagan was president, MTV had just gone on the air and the then-rural county had fewer than 175,000 residents.
As Healey prepares to leave the office where he's spent his entire career, including 26 years as the county's top prosecutor, the sprawling suburb has roughly 764,000 residents with a growing number of diverse communities.
A Republican, Healey announced his retirement more than a year before the blue wave that swept many Democrats into county offices, including his own. Democrat Brian Middleton, a Houston defense attorney who once worked for Healey, will succeed him at the start of 2019.
The county is also tilting more toward the Democrats, from Hillary Clinton winning the county in 2016 to ousting longtime County Judge Bob Hebert, a Republican, this past fall. Hebert will be succeeded by Democrat KP George.
"I think you have a well-organized Democratic Party that mobilized a lot of people on fear across the board in the ballot of Donald Trump," said Healey. "Those that voted straight-ticket voted good Republicans out of office, didn't care that they were doing it, and maybe didn't even know that they were doing it."
I do so love the implication that people who voted straight ticket were too stupid to know who and what they were voting for. There's nothing more appealing in a public official than insulting voters. The possibility that people may have been deliberately and consciously voting for a change of direction, to rebuke a corrupt and incompetent president, for the candidates who better reflected their values and experiences, or some combination of all three, just doesn't occur to him. Which strongly suggests to me that he picked the right time to get off the stage.
And just for the record:
Straight R    81,228
Straight D    89,491
Margin         8,263
240th District Court
Bridges      117,587
Fraley       132,199
Margin        14,612
Hawkins      116,476
Williams     133,419
Cannata      117,370
Rolnick      132,206
Vacek        115,370
Middleton    134,915
Hebert       118,001
George       132,783
Elliott      117,534
Walker       132,630
I skipped a few county court races, all of which were in the same range. Point being, even if you accept the ridiculous and ridicule-worthy claim that straight ticket votes are somehow less than other votes, every countywide Democrat in Fort Bend still won their race. Nowhere was that margin greater than in the race for DA, to succeed John Healey. You can believe what you want to believe, John. The voters knew what they wanted.
From the "If at first you don't succeed" department
Three Dem Congressional candidates from 2018 may try again in 2020.
Todd Litton
Among the typically deep-red districts that came down to single digits were three races around Harris County. Incumbent Reps. Michael McCaul, R-Austin, and Pete Olson, R-Sugar Land, won by margins of 4.3 and 4.9 percentage points in Texas' heavily gerrymandered 10th and 22nd Congressional Districts. Rep.-elect Dan Crenshaw, R-Spring, won by more than 7 points an open race for the 2nd Congressional District, one also drawn to elect Republicans.
In recent elections, the districts had gone to Republicans by no fewer than 19 percentage points, with margins as high as 38 points.
Now, as they parse the results and consider what comes next, Democrats in these races must grapple with important questions. Did they come close because of a boost from Democrat Beto O'Rourke's Senate bid and anger among voters prodded to the polls by President Donald Trump, or did they offer a preview of what is to come? Is a 40-something percent result the ceiling, and if not, where might they find more votes?
All three losing Democrats — Todd Litton, Mike Siegel and Sri Preston Kulkarni — said they may take another swing at the districts in 2020, when Trump could appear atop the ballot and galvanize even more voters than in 2018.
Litton acknowledged he was unlucky to draw an opponent as tough as Crenshaw, saying the former Navy SEAL "was not your standard first-time candidate." For now, the defeated Democrat plans to see how Crenshaw's first term goes, and decide later if he wants to run.
"I'd consider it. I don't know that I'm going to do it," said Litton, who directed an education nonprofit before seeking office. "We'll see how Dan does and what he says."
Mike Siegel
Texas' 10th Congressional District covers much of the rural area between Travis and Harris counties, stretching across nine counties from Katy and Cypress all the way through downtown Austin to Lake Travis. It is one of four GOP-held districts dividing up deep-blue Travis County, the only county Siegel won.
Compared to McCaul's 2016 race, turnout this year grew by more than 3,400 votes in Travis County, where McCaul's support fell by about eight percentage points. In the remaining eight counties, turnout fell by 8,200 votes from two years ago, and McCaul's support dropped from 70 percent to 65 percent.
All told, McCaul lost ground in every county from 2016, though his support dipped by fewer than two percentage points in Austin, Colorado, Fayette, Lee and Washington counties — all areas where Siegel failed to break even 23 percent.
One reason for Democratic optimism, Siegel said, is the changing nature of Bastrop and Waller counties, located next to Travis and Harris, respectively. Two years ago, McCaul won Bastrop and Waller by 22 and 32 percentage points, respectively, while this year the margin was 11 and 25 points. Siegel also drew 36 percent of the vote in Harris County, about 7 points ahead of Cadien in 2016.
Sri Kulkarni
Olson never had won a general election by fewer than 19 points — his margin in 2016 — but several trends gave Kulkarni reason to contest the district. Notably, it shifted 17.5 points in favor of Democrats from the 2012 to 2016 presidential election, the fourth most dramatic change in the country.
Kulkarni's preliminary data also found that both parties had ignored major swaths of the district. In particular, Asian residents make up about 20 percent of the district's population, far more than any other Texas congressional district, but Kulkarni found that three-quarters of Asian voters had not been contacted by any political party.
Kulkarni's efforts hinged on turning out the scores of college-educated immigrants who moved to the district during the last several years. He ultimately lost by 4.9 percentage points, a result he attributes partly to not reaching enough Hispanic voters. He did not rule out giving it another shot in 2020.
"If I'm the best candidate, I'll run again," Kulkarni said. "I don't want to throw away all the hard work that we did in organizing here, because going from 19 points two years ago or 34 points four years ago, to 4.9 — there's obviously a change going on in terms of who's participating."
A few general thoughts…
1. Obviously, it's very early to say who may or may not be running in 2020. Even if all three of these guys say they're in, they could face primary opponents, and who knows what might happen in a Presidential-year primary, where I think we might see 2008-level turnout. That said, there are always advantages to getting in early – among other things, you can start fundraising right away – and whether we like it or not, the 2020 campaign is already underway. Take all the time you need to decide, but don't take any longer than that.
2. Of the three, Litton or anyone else in CD02 will likely have the toughest race. Dan Crenshaw has star potential, and he doesn't yet have any Trump stink on him. He also had the biggest margin of victory in 2018. On the other hand, he will have to start making tough choices about Trump and the Trump agenda, and with CD07 in Democratic hands, CD02 is (along with County Commissioner Precinct 3) the top target for Team Blue in 2020. In addition, no one has to be convinced now that CD02 is worth targeting. It will be on the national radar from the beginning, which will help.
3. That "key for Democratic optimism" paragraph about CD10 is the key for 2020. The Harris County part of the district is fast-growing, and offers a lot of opportunity to find, register, and turn out new Dem voters that year. Looking at the 2016 and 2018 election returns, there were 21K more voters this year in the Harris part of CD10 than there were two years ago. Turnout was 69% in there in 2016, and 59% in 2018, though that meant 6K more voters thanks to the larger voter pool. I feel like if you can get the Dem number in Harris County above 40%, you can win this district. You'll still need a strong showing in Travis, and there's room for growth as noted in Bastrop and Waller, but if you get to 40% in Harris I feel like this one is in reach.
4. As noted before, Pete Olson may or may not make it to the ballot in 2020. Generally speaking, having an open seat makes it more winnable for the opposing party. That may be less true in the Trump era, but an open seat will definitely push this up a notch on the national radar. If Kulkarni runs again, my advice is "keep doing what you're doing". If it's someone else, my advice is "do what Sri Kulkarni did, and do more of it".
Normally, this is the time when I say things like "I want to get through 2019 before I start thinking about 2020". This is the world we live in now. 2019 is important, but given that everyone who wants to run in 2020 will have to file for office before 2019 is over, we really do have to be thinking about it now.
Better sidewalks needs to be everyone's job
It's the only way we're going to make progress.
Houstonians annoyed by cracked, missing or buckled sidewalks along their streets may be surprised to learn that city rules make residents responsible for fixing them.
At the urging of council members three years ago, Houston Public Works tried something new, launching a program that let homeowners get quotes for sidewalk repairs from city-approved contractors, then pay for the fix.
Though 155 residents signed up and 105 got cost estimates, only two agreed to pay the bill — likely because the average quote was $5,000.
Public Works officials acknowledge the city's involvement added overhead that resulted in estimates double or triple what a resident otherwise would pay. The program has been scrapped.
Still, city officials say adding more sidewalks is a worthy goal. The issue, Public Works Deputy Director Jeff Weatherford said, is that Houston has no sidewalk repair budget and sets aside just $2.6 million a year to add new sidewalks through a few targeted programs. Compare that with the $83 million needed to fulfill 580 pending requests for new sidewalks.
"There's a funding shortfall," Weatherford said. "We'd love to expand it, we're having conversations about different ways to expand it, we're looking at priorities for grants, other alternative funding sources. But until we've worked out a way to get that, it's going to be a balancing act."
Residents can apply to have up to four blocks of sidewalks added near schools and along major streets, but typically must wait three to five years. Residents with disabilities also can apply to have up to 1,500 feet of sidewalks built around their homes. These Pedestrian Accessibility Reviews, which have produced about 75 finished sidewalk projects in the last five years, get top priority.
Advocates with the 6-year-old Houston Complete Streets Coalition want to work toward a sidewalk plan for the city, assessing the presence and condition of existing sidewalks, compiling the resulting information in a database and using it, alongside identified priorities, to guide decisions on where to install and repair sidewalks.
Michael Huffmaster, who leads the group of civic clubs known as the Super Neighborhood Alliance and represents that group on the coalition, said one proposal is to incorporate public facilities like community centers, libraries and parks into the program that adds sidewalks around schools.
"It's up to City Council to fund sidewalks at a level that makes a meaningful contribution to the needs of the city," Huffmaster said. "It's sad that we put the burden of the sidewalk on the adjacent property owner because it's an improvement that's within the public right of way. Mobility in the city, pedestrian safety, should be priorities."
Weatherford said he does not oppose adding facilities like libraries to the school sidewalk program or the idea of a sidewalk plan, but he said the funding question must be solved first, lest the backlog of unfunded sidewalk requests swell and the new plan sit unused on a shelf.
I have two thoughts about this. One is that the city should revisit that Public Works program, but in a style similar to one that already exists for financing the installation of solar panels: Have the city pay for the work up front (floating a bond if need be for the capital costs), then letting homeowners who get their sidewalks fixed pay that back via a charge added to their monthly water bill. The overall amount the city would have to borrow isn't that much, and individual homeowners ought to be able to pay it off in three years or so; payment options can be given for that. I don't see a down side to this.
I would also expand upon the Super Neighborhood Alliance idea. How can we get other government entities involved? As I have said several times before, the city of Houston is also (almost entirely) within Harris County. Metro has done some work at and around bus stops since the 2012 referendum giving them a larger share of the sales tax revenue. I'd like to see that continued and expanded with the 2019 referendum. HISD and the other school districts should kick in for better sidewalks around their schools, as a matter of student safety. H-GAC should seek out state and federal grant money for sidewalks. This still needs to be a primary responsibility of the city, but there's no reason it has to be the city's sole responsibility. If we want to solve the problem, we need to make it everyone's priority.
The Harris County GOP has not hit bottom yet
I have four thing to say about this.
Drubbed. Shellacked. Whooped. Walloped. Routed.
However you want to describe November's midterm election, it was disastrous for Harris County Republicans. They were swept from the remaining countywide posts they held — the other shoe to drop after Democrats booted the Republican sheriff and district attorney two years ago — and lost all 55 judicial seats on the ballot. For the first time in decades, Democrats will hold a majority of Commissioners Court.
The path forward for the local GOP is unclear. The party's statewide slate went undefeated yet rebuked by Harris County voters, raising questions about whether its pitch to rural voters alienated urban ones. In the state's most populous county, and his home base, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz got just 41 percent of the vote.
Harris County Republican Party Chairman Paul Simpson, however, is optimistic. He said several local Republicans would have won, chief among them County Judge Ed Emmett, if straight-ticket voting had been eliminated before the election. Republicans in the Texas Legislature decided to retire the straight-ticket option after 2018, which traditionally benefited their party, but proved disastrous for the GOP in urban counties this cycle.
"Pendulums will swing back," Simpson said. "I'm confident in the near future, we'll be back."
Scholars and Emmett, the county executive for 11 years before his upset loss, offered a less rosy assessment — that of a party catering to a largely white, graying base that is failing to adapt to changing demographics and awaiting the return of a "normal" electorate that has ceased to exist. November 2018 should be a wake-up call, they say, but they wonder if the local Republican Party is listening.
"If you look at '18 as a turning point for Harris County, there's nothing data-wise that would give you any indication this was an aberration and not a structural change," said Jay Aiyer, who teaches political science at Texas Southern University. "If anything, you could see it actually swinging harder to the Democrats in '22."
Mark Jones, who studies Texas politics at Rice University, offered a more tepid view. He said the broad unpopularity of President Donald Trump drove some voters to the polls this fall who may not have participated otherwise.
"If you take Trump out of the equation and put in a more liberal Democrat … it's not clear to me that Democrats have the same level of advantage," Jones said. "The county is trending from red, to pink, to purple. But I would not say Harris County is blue."
Republicans have not won a countywide post in a presidential election year since 2012. University of Houston political science professor Brandon Rottinghaus said the local GOP would be wise to lower its expectations for 2020, which likely will feature an unpopular president at the top of the ticket.
"The Republicans need to show they've still got a pulse after the disaster that befell them in '18," Rottinghaus said. "That's about the best they can hope for in a presidential year."
Simpson, who has led county Republicans since 2014, said the party will focus on recruiting fresh candidates who can appeal to a wide swath of voters, rather than the sliver of partisans who vote in primaries. He lauded the success of Dan Crenshaw in the 2nd Congressional District, a young, charismatic combat veteran who beat better-funded candidates in the primary.
Crenshaw's win, Simpson said, showed candidates "can be conservative and still be cool."
The Texas 2nd, however, is a district drawn for Republicans that has a far greater proportion of white residents than Harris County as a whole.
1. I've said all there is for me to say about straight ticket voting. The embedded image is a reminder that Republicans used to be big fans of straight ticket voting. Turns out that straight ticket voting works really well for the party that has more voters to begin with. There's an awful lot of Republicans in this state who never contemplated the possibility that they would not be the majority party.
2. As noted in the title of this post, Republicans in Harris County have not hit rock bottom quite yet. One thing I discovered in doing the precinct data analyses is that Beto O'Rourke carried all eight Constable/Justice of the Peace precincts. I didn't write about that in part because I didn't quite believe it, but there it is. The three Republican Constables and three of the six Republican JPs are on the ballot in 2020. It is entirely within the realm of possibility that after the 2020 election, the only Republicans holding county office will be the three JPs in Place 2 (the of-year cycle), County Commissioner Jack Cagle, and the three not-at-large HCDE Trustees. Those last three JPs could then be wiped out in 2022, along with the HCDE Trustee for Precinct 2, with the Trustee for Precinct 3 (who won this year by less than a percentage point) on track for elimination in 2024. Yes, lots of things can change, and I'm assuming that Commissioner Steve Radack will either be defeated in 2020 or will step down and the Republicans will fail to hold his seat. My point is, the Republicans not only have very little left, what they have is precarious and fragile, and there are no obvious opportunities to make gains in county government.
(You may now be saying "But Adrian Garcia will have to run for re-election in 2022, and he won a close race this year under favorable circumstances, so he could lose then." Yes, but do you know what happens between now and the 2022 elections? The County Commissioner precincts undergo redistricting. Jack Morman benefited from that process after his win in 2010; what I wrote here was premature but in the end turned out to be accurate. I guarantee you, Precinct 2 will be friendlier to Commissioner Garcia's re-election prospects, and if a Dem wins in Precinct 3 in 2020, it will be friendlier to that Commissioner's prospects in 2024 as well.)
Legislatively, Dems have more targets (HDs 138, 134, and 126, with longer shots in 129 and 133 and even 150) than they have seats to defend. Lizzie Fletcher will have to defend CD07, but Dan Crenshaw will have to defend CD02, and he didn't win his seat by much more than Fletcher won hers by (7 points for Crenshaw, 5 points for Fletcher). CD10 and CD22, which cover more than Harris County, are already on the national radar for 2020 as well. We're not watching the battleground any more, we're in the thick of it.
3. The Republicans' problems in Harris County run deeper than Donald Trump. Every statewide elected official, most especially Dan Patrick (here shilling for the ludicrous "wall") and Ken Paxton, who is spending all of his energy outside his own criminal defense on destroying health care, is a surrogate for Trump. People were just as fired up to vote against Patrick, Paxton, and Sid Miller as they were to vote against Ted Cruz, and the numbers bear that out. They'll get another chance to do that in 2022, so even in a (please, God, please) post-Trump landscape, there will still be reminders of Trump and reasons to keep doing the work that we started in 2018.
4. All that said, we know two things for sure: One is that there are more Democrats than Republicans in Harris County, which is a combination of demographic trends, Donald Trump laying waste to American values, and sustained voter registration efforts. Two, Republicans have been unable to compete in a high-turnout election in Harris County since 2008. (2010 was a relatively high turnout year, for an off year, but it was still only 41.7%, quite a bit less than this year's 52.8%.) It is a reasonable question to ask if Dems can be dominant in a low-turnout scenario. 2014 was a terrible year for turnout, and Republicans swept the county, but with the topline Rs mostly winning by four to six points. There's definitely a scenario under which Rs could do well in 2022 and in which the demographic and political patterns we have seen do not fundamentally change. It's hard to see how they compete going forward without a serious effort to rebrand, and every day that Donald Trump and Dan Patrick and Ken Paxton and Sid Miller are in office, that rebranding becomes harder to do. Lots of things can change. The Republican Party needs to be one of them.
More Congressional retirement speculation
From Roll Call:
Rep. Kenny Marchant
Life in the minority will be a new experience for most House Republicans next year. And many of them may not remember what happened the last time the GOP lost the House.
After the 2006 Democratic wave, about two dozen Republicans opted to retire the following cycle instead of languishing in the minority. And some in the party are worried about a repeat.
"I don't know if people have gotten over the shell shock yet, but there ought to be," said Rep. Tom Cole when asked if there was concern about potential retirements.
The Oklahoma Republican knows firsthand the costs of losing the majority. He chaired the National Republican Congressional Committee in the 2008 campaign cycle and was tasked with convincing Republicans in tough districts not to retire. Twenty-three members ended up choosing to leave.
Convincing someone not to retire is a difficult, but important, sell — especially after a huge wave of GOP retirements in the 2018 cycle opened the door to Democratic victories last month.
"We saw how devastating that was for us this year," Cole said. "Another round of that would be really bad."
Close attention is likely to fall on lawmakers who survived close races last month, particularly in suburban areas where President Donald Trump is unpopular. And a few names are already starting to circulate.
A handful of Texas Republicans survived closer-than-expected contests. Rep. Pete Olson, who won re-election by 5 points in a district outside Houston, had been rumored to be eyeing the exit. But his chief of staff Melissa Kelly denied it. Rep. Kenny Marchant, who won his Dallas-area seat by just 3 points, said he "absolutely" is also running again, calling his recent victory margin an "anomaly."
A handful of GOP ranking members who are facing their last term at the top of their committees could also be looking to leave. Republicans can only serve a combined six years as chairman or ranking member of a committee, and that influenced several retirements last cycle.
Rep. Olson has been the subject of retirement rumors for some time now. I don't think anyone will be surprised if he bows out. Marchant is a new name for this, and it's one that I think may have been more about speculation than actual chatter. That said, people have noticed how close CD24 was, and it's a virtual certainty that Marchant will be in the spotlight this cycle. Beto carried CD24, a fact that you should expect to hear many more times over the next two years. (Beto also carried CD10, by a smaller margin.)
Along those lines, here are the way-too-early Cook Political Report rankings for the 2020 House elections. CDs 07 and 32, the two won by Dem challengers this year, are Lean Democratic. CDs 23 and 24 – there's that district again – are Republican Toss-Ups. CDs 10, 21, 22, and 31 are Lean Republican, while CD06 is Likely Republican. I for one think CDs 02, 03, and 25 deserve mention as well. No matter how you look at it, Texas is going to get a lot of attention in 2020.
Watch your packages
They're disappearing off porches at an increasing rate.
Package thefts have become a growing problem across the country, Texas and Houston as more people shop online. Nearly 26 million Americans have had a holiday package stolen, according to a study by InsuranceQuotes, an Austin-based online insurance marketplace.
In Houston, police say, package thefts have increased by 80 percent since 2015, when the Houston Police started tracking the crime. SafeWise, a home security company research firm, estimates that nearly 20 out of every 1,000 Houston residents have had packages stolen and ranks the city No. 7 in the nation for package theft.
Houston was the largest city on SafeWise's national list, which was dominated by Texas cities including No. 1 Austin and No. 8 Dallas.
The problem, of course, is exacerbated during the holidays, the busiest shopping season of the year. Americans spent a record $110.6 billion online between Nov. 1 and Dec. 19, an increase of 17.8 percent from last year, according to Adobe Analytics, a research firm tracking online shopping
"When the number of packages goes up, thefts go up," Houston Police spokesman John Cannon said.
Package theft is difficult to solve — even with the proliferation of security cameras and video doorbells — because it's a crime of opportunity, said Sgt. Eugenio Gonzalez with Houston Police's burglary and theft division While there are some groups of so-called porch pirates roaming around snatching packages, many are first-time criminals.
"It's easy pickings," said Gonzalez.
Some consumers are taking matters into their own hands by setting out decoy packages. Recently, a former NASA engineer rigged a package that sprayed glitter and a fart-smell cologne on porch pirates when they opened it — and filmed their reactions. The resulting video went viral on YouTube, with more than 42 million views.
Houston police don't recommend people set out bait packages to try to catch package thieves. Instead, they encourage residents to call and report thefts and have officers investigate.
Residents should schedule deliveries when someone is home, or have it delivered to people's workplace or a neighbor's house, police said. The department also encourages installing video cameras, buying shipping insurance and using package lockers.
"I never tell anyone to take the law into their own hands," Gonzalez said. "I myself will be getting a Ring video doorbell for my family."
I wouldn't recommend the decoy package thing either, but I thank the guy who did do it for the lolz. There are various ways to mitigate against the problem, from secure pickup locations to letting delivery people enter your home to the old-fashioned "drop it off with a neighbor" and "be at home when they deliver" strategies. Or, you know, maybe buy more stuff in stores. I'm just saying.
Recruiting more women for 2020
We made a lot of progress towards better gender balance in our various legislative bodies this year. If we want to make more progress in 2020, it starts with finding and recruiting more female candidates.
Kim Olson
Even on a rainy Thursday night in the busy weeks before Christmas, nearly two dozen women crowded into a country club meeting room here, fired up about the possibility of running for office.
Democratic recruiters report that about 100 women attended similar "Candidate 101" classes across Texas last week. The party is searching far and wide for potential candidates as Democratic leaders look to capitalize on momentum from the November midterm election, when women claimed a greater share of political power in Congress than ever before.
The 102 women elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in November represent 23 percent of House members. Women will hold 38 of the 181 available seats when the Texas Legislature convenes in January — about 20 percent.
"I think there's more work to be done for increasing diversity so everybody has a seat at the table," said Pooja Sethi, who is Indian and who worked as a fundraiser for several Austin-area Democratic candidates. She wants to see more South Asians in the Texas Legislature. "The future is bright."
Hmm. I count 41 women currently in the Lege, with Reps. Carol Alvarado and Joe Pickett needing to be succeeded. I also counted 37 from the previous session. I may have miscounted – feel free to double check me – but I'm not sure where that 38 comes from. Be that as it may, eight of the 12 Democratic challengers in the House that won were women.
Kim Olson, a Democrat and retired Air Force Colonel, said she awoke after Trump's election "mad as hell" and determined to run for office — she just didn't know which one.
After learning Democrats were having a tough time finding candidates to run for Texas agriculture commissioner, the beekeeper and farmer decided that was the office she wanted, she told the women gathered at the "Candidate 101" course in Cedar Park.
With no name recognition but a strong personality, she earned 3.8 million votes — more than any other woman who has run statewide in Texas, including former Gov. Ann Richards and former U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson and failed gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis. Olson, who raised close to $450,000 — largely in donations of less than $200 — fell 5 percentage points short of defeating Republican Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller.
Olson said she wants to use the political capital she has built to find a female candidate to run against U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, whose seat is up for re-election 2020.
Noting that 2020 will mark the 100-year anniversary of women's winning the right to vote, she said, "Some woman is going to run. If Beto (O'Rourke) doesn't do it, let's find the right woman."
Olson hinted she would be willing to run herself if no suitable candidate emerges, but stressed she wants to help "take these kids from JV to varsity."
"I'm going to be unapologetic — it's got to be all about women," she said. "This what the long game looks like."
I'm down with Kim Olson running for Senate if Beto opts out. We're only about halfway to where we should be, so this very much is about the long game.
It's tree-recycling time
You have nearly three weeks to do this. Don't miss out.
Texas blog roundup for the week of December 24
The Texas Progressive Alliance wishes everyone the happiest of holidays as it brings you this week's roundup.
Mel Torme once again wishes you a Merry Christmas
You know the story by now, my favorite Christmas story ever. If you know it, treat yourself and read it again. If you don't know it, if you're new here and you have no idea what I'm talking about, go click the link and find out. You won't regret it. Merry Christmas, everyone.
And away they all flew, like the down of a thistle
As always, my favorite Christmas Eve video:
May you and yours get all your Christmas wishes fulfilled.
Santa's employment agency
Good work if you can get it.
If you have had a picture taken with Santa Claus in San Antonio this holiday season, there's a good chance he was booked through a local business run by a head elf.
That head elf is Renee Davis, CEO of San Antonio-based Santa Express Central, who manages more than 50 professional Santa Clauses across the state, a business Davis said keeps her busy year-round.
"In order to get a really professional Santa, retailers get on it a good 18 months to a year in advance, because it's that competitive to get a good Santa," she said.
All of the Santas with Santa Express Central have real beards, Davis said. She puts them through a background check, insures them, outfits them with Santa uniforms, and enrolls them into her own Santa school. There they practice their ho-ho-ho's and learn how to style themselves properly, speak around children, preserve the magic of Santa Claus, and strike the best poses for the camera. Her training prepares them to be the best Santas they can be, she said.
"My Santas book out very fast, and it's because of the difference we make," she said. "They're taking that extra moment and time, letting the child know, 'I care, I see you, and I hear you.'"
Between November and December, Davis estimates she books more than 600 events with her Santa Clauses. She has 57 Santas across Texas, though the majority live in the San Antonio and Hill Country area.
Hey, Santa has better things to do than figure out where his next gig is. It's good that he has someone to do this sort of thing for him. Visit the charmingly retro Santa Express Central webpage to learn more.
"The focus on the technology behind fake media obscures more pressing questions about the psychology and sociology of viral false narratives."
"I hate the fact that I believe this, but I do, in fact, believe pretty strongly that conservatives on the Supreme Court will never strike down even the most egregious gerrymanders unless Democrats prove that they can play the game too. So let's play."
"The rise of politicians like El-Sayed, Omar, and Tlaib also undermines a core argument advanced by dictators in the Middle East: that their people are not ready for democracy."
"One place we can look to gauge the extent of the capitalist class's triumph in the state is the tax code. While government programs in the US are commonly viewed as the province of the poor, the US tax code is actually riddled with giveaways to the rich. In 2014, the average household in the top 0.1 percent — people with more than $100 million in assets — received more in tax breaks than the average household in the bottom 50 percent."
You want to understand the Les Moonves story and the unbelievably awful working environment at CBS, read this.
"A John Waters Christmas is exactly what it says on the label. You would not want this to be the only Christmas album that you own, but it will certainly be very much more what it is than any of the others."
The biggest tech lies of 2018.
Not everyone missed the story of rising rightwing violence in America.
Santa's attorney tells all.
Among other things, the Mueller probe is turning a profit for the federal government.
Celebrating local journalism in all fifty states.
"Race, not abortion, was the founding issue of the religious right".
RIP, Colin Kroll, co-founder of HQ Trivia and Vine.
RIP, Penny Marshall, actor and director known for many things, from Laverne and Shirley to A League Of Their Own and much more.
By the way, here's the story of the iconic script "L" on all of Laverne's outfits.
"Pause on that for a moment. An American presidential campaign indicated to the Kremlin it would happily conspire with the Russians on secret dirty tricks."
"There's really nothing more you need for the quid pro quo. Putin was dangling hundreds of millions of dollars in front of Trump, in addition to operating on numerous fronts to make Trump President."
"Here's the thing. If the Justice Department takes the position that Michael Cohen should go to jail, that these allegations are so serious that he should go to jail for these campaign fraud allegations, what is the argument against jail for the individual who coordinated and directed that scheme?"
"Think of all the Trumps this foundation helped. Donald, Donald Jr., a business associate of Trump's, a Trump-affiliated fountain, a tower, Pam Bondi. Think of all the millions who benefited from these actions — millions, that is, of dollars that Donald Trump did not have to spend and were able to stay happily united with their friends in his investment vehicles, or wherever it is that we think they are, not having seen his tax returns."
It was a good year for horror on television.
From young guns to has beens in less than a decade.
"Here's a complete rundown of the various known investigations targeting Trump's world from local, state, and federal prosecutors".
Pete Sessions' fine whine
There ain't enough cheese in the entire state of Wisconsin to accompany this.
Rep. Pete Sessions' campaign might be over. But he isn't over it.
The Dallas Republican is still smoldering about the circumstances that led to his decisive loss in November to Democrat Colin Allred, a first-time political candidate who ended Sessions' 22-year career in Congress and helped tip the House back to Democratic control.
"It required an incredible amount of money and an overwhelming sense of mischaracterization," Sessions told The Dallas Morning News at his Capitol office.
That indignation burned through a recent exit interview, one that included a matter-of-fact assessment by the chairman of the House Rules Committee that he's "not done with politics."
His biggest campaign regret, he allowed, was that he didn't "take more credit for the things that I do." The campaign's X factor had nothing to do with his own race, he said, but instead the success that Senate candidate Beto O'Rourke had in bringing Democrats to the polls.
He struggled to win over new voters, he vented, because of the "Democratic Party and their allies who smeared" him as an out-of-touch Beltway insider — and worse.
"I got tattooed this election," he said. "People fell victim to thinking, 'Wow, he's for dogfighting. Wow, he does nothing for seniors. Wow, he voted against cancer drugs.'"
There's more, and you should click over and savor every last word of it. Honestly, there's no sweeter sound than those of a PAC-fattened kingpin complaining about how unfair it is that he has to get a real job now. Don't worry, Pete, I'm sure the gravy train will make a stop at your office before you have to vamoose. In the meantime, don't let the door hit you on the way out.
Recapture reinterpretation lawsuit update
This is a bit in the weeds, so bear with me.
Houston ISD likely will keep an additional tens of millions of dollars more in property tax revenues each year following a widely expected Texas appeals court decision Friday.
Judges from the state's 3rd District Court of Appeals ruled against two small school districts and a nonprofit that sued the Texas Education Agency over its re-interpretation of statutes related to "recapture," the state's method of redistributing tax revenues from property-wealthy districts to property-poor districts. The ruling means that property-wealthy districts, such as HISD, will face lower "recapture" payments back to the state moving forward.
HISD officials projected the ruling would result in the district keeping an additional $51 million in 2018-19. District leaders expected the Texas Education Agency to win the lawsuit, so the already factored the $51 million in revenue into the current budget. As a result, the district will not see a windfall that can be spent on additional costs.
The plaintiffs alleged the Texas Education Agency improperly re-interpreted state law to include optional property tax homestead exemptions into "recapture" calculations for districts with wealthy property tax bases relative to their student enrollment totals.
A district court judge granted a temporary injunction in favor of the plaintiffs. However, the appellate court found the plaintiffs could not prove they were harmed by the re-interpretation because it did not cause a shortfall in the state's Foundation School Program, the fund through which state money is distributed to school districts.
See here and here for the background. Back when we were all arguing about HISD making recapture payments to the state, HISD successfully managed to get the TEA to interpret the law over how such payments are calculated to take into account the Local Option Homestead Exemption (LOHE) that some districts like HISD offer. Taking the LOHE into account, which the TEA had not previously done, causes the recapture formula to produce a smaller bill for districts like HISD that use it. That's where that $51 million figure comes from. A couple of smaller school districts, along with MALDEF, filed suit over this reinterpretation on the grounds that it would cost them money, which was in conflict with the Foundation School Program. The Third Court of Appeals has ruled that the smaller districts could not prove that they were harmed, so the TEA rule as now interpreted was upheld, which in turn saves HISD some money. Makes sense? Of course, if the Lege follows through on its latest plan to reform school finance, any or all of this could change in ways we don't yet know. But for now, this is where we stand.
Will Amazon ruin Christmas trees?
Maybe!
Amazon this year launched a new service to deliver full-sized, fresh Christmas trees to customers' homes, betting that lots of people will prefer convenience over experience. The mega-etailer has shown time and time again that it can change consumer buying habits and longtime traditions, and that is making purveyors of fresh Christmas trees around Houston nervous.
Devine said he was flabbergasted that Amazon would try to break into the business. Shortly after Amazon began selling trees, Devine said, he burned his Amazon Prime card and swore to never buy anything from the online retailer again.
"Amazon has just gone too far with this, coming after our livelihood," Devine said. "They're going to hurt small, independent nurseries like us. We rely a lot on tree sales."
Amazon isn't the first retailer to ship Christmas trees direct to consumers. Specialty retailers, such as Williams-Sonoma and Hammacher Schlemmer, have delivered fresh Christmas trees for years, while Home Depot, which sells 2.5 million Christmas trees a year, started shipping trees in 2014. Third-party retailers have sold Christmas trees through Amazon.com for some time.
But Amazon's direct entry into the market raises the threat to Christmas tree lots to a new level. Over the years, Amazon's relentless drive into new markets has wiped out book stores, sellers of toys and electronics and long list of other retailers. When Amazon bought Whole Foods last year, the $13.7 billion acquisition sent a shock wave throughout the grocery industry, ushering in a new era of e-commerce.
Today, most major grocers in Houston offer online ordering, curbside pickup and home delivery of groceries. H-E-B, Kroger and Walmart are investing heavily in new technologies to compete with Amazon.
Tree farms, where Houstonians can cut down their own trees, said they're not that worried about Amazon. Many farms host activities such as photo shoots with Santa and Christmas light shows, which Amazon can't match online.
Larry and Mary Emerson have sold Christmas trees at Dewberry Farms since 2009. The husband-and-wife owners have planted nearly 17,000 Cypress and Blue Ice trees on some 20 acres on their farm in Brookshire, just 10 miles from a new 1-million-square-foot distribution facility where Amazon's trees will be shipped.
The Emersons sell between 2,000 and 2,500 Christmas trees a year, ranging in price from $40 to $300. Tree sales are down a little from last year, but the farm is still doing well, Emerson said, declining to give specifics. Dewberry Farms attracts as many as 100,000 visitors a year to its fall pumpkin patch, Christmas tree farm and attractions, like big slides, a carousel and petting zoo.
"Our customers, they're not just looking for trees," Mary Emerson said. "They're looking for tradition."
I'm the wrong person to ask about this. I grew up with an artificial tree, and we buy our tree at Lowe's every year. I figure when the kids are grown, we'll just get something smaller. If we wind up getting that from Amazon, it won't be a net loss for the tree farmers, since we were never their customers to begin with. Does tradition matter, and if so how much? I will note that there are still some independent bookstores out there, and they do the sort of in-person amenities that the tree farmers do to stay in business, so there's at least some hope.
HD145 and HD79 special elections set
Another sprint.
Sen. Carol Alvarado
Gov. Greg Abbott on Friday set a Jan. 29 special election to fill state Sen. Carol Alvarado's seat in the Texas House, hours after she was sworn in to the upper chamber.
Alvarado, D-Houston, won a special election Dec. 11 to fill the Texas Senate seat vacated by U.S. Rep.-elect Sylvia Garcia, who was elected in November to replace U.S. Rep. Gene Green, D-Houston. Green, who first was elected to the House from the newly-created District 29 in 1992, announced he would not run for reelection last November.
Candidates have until 5 p.m. Jan. 3 to file for the election, while early voting starts Jan. 14.
Christina Morales, the president and CEO of Morales Funeral Home in Houston's East End, announced on Facebook earlier this month that she would seek the seat. Martha Fierro, a Republican who finished third in the race for Garcia's Senate seat, announced on Twitter the next day that she intended to run for the seat.
Alvarado had held the seat since 2009, winning an open race after incumbent state Rep. Rick Noriega ran unsuccessfully for U.S. Senate.
The district voted 67 percent to 29 percent in favor of Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump in 2016.
Melissa Noriega, Rick Noriega's wife, has said she is considering a run for the seat. She previously served on Houston City Council and held the District 145 seat in 2005 while her husband served in Afghanistan.
See here for the background. Alvarado was sworn in yesterday, making her resignation official. I'm glad to see this get on the calendar. If there is a runoff, HD145 (which is my district) should have representation again by mid-to-late March or so.
As I expected, the special election for HD79 to succeed Rep. Joe Pickett was set for the same day. There are candidates lining up for that seat as well.
Two candidates have emerged in the race to replace state Rep. Joe Pickett, who will step down from his post on Jan. 4: Art Fierro, chairman of the El Paso Community College board, and Dr. Michiel Noe, who is finishing his last term as a city representative.
Pickett, who is the longest serving El Paso lawmaker at the statehouse, surprised many of his colleagues over the weekend when he announced that he will step down from his position on Jan. 4 to deal with health issues stemming from a 2016 cancer diagnosis.
Gov. Greg Abbott has 20 days from Pickett's announcement to call for a special election.
"I am going to throw my hat in the ring," Fierro said in an interview Tuesday morning. "I will be a great representative and a partner to our delegation in their efforts to continue to improve our community and let the rest of Texas see how wonderful El Paso is."
Noe, who works as an OB-GYN, announced his intentions to run for the seat on Tuesday night.
"Joe Pickett is a friend of mine and I've always been an admirer of his," he said in an interview. "When he broke the news that he would have to resign, it was kind of heartbreaking, but it left a spot open that would be empty. and with the background that I have, I will hopefully just transition into representing the district."
Noe has served as a city representative for eight years, with his final term set to end in January, when incoming representative Isabel Salcido is sworn-in.
I figure it's more likely than not that both races will wind up with more candidates than the ones named in these stories. They're not wasting any time in HD79. I expect things to move quickly as well here in Houston. Ready or not, it's soon going to be time for some of us to vote again.
Asking the unanswered questions
Ross Ramsey goes there on Sen. Charles Schwertner.
Sen. Charles Schwertner
The problem is that the investigation at UT didn't reach any final conclusions. The investigator couldn't prove Schwertner was at fault, but also couldn't prove he was not. There is no evidence here to clear his name. In that way, it's as though no investigation had taken place; Schwertner is in the same fix he was in after the allegations were known and before Johnny Sutton, a former U.S. attorney who is now in private practice, started digging around. The only publicly available part of his inquiry is a two-page executive summary. His conclusions might be worse than what he was sent to find out in the first place[.]
Schwertner's continued presence in the Legislature will be a measure of the other senators' confidence that this is, as Schwertner asserted in a news release, all behind them — that this is an isolated case that doesn't reflect on the Senate in particular or the Legislature in general. They're also betting that his standing as a public official had nothing to do with any of this — that it was a purely personal matter that didn't depend on his official standing or power. And that the remaining questions about his behavior don't reflect on the rest of them.
It comes at a particularly inopportune time, with a 140-day legislative session starting less than three weeks from now. All legislators are more closely watched when they're actually in Austin doing work. The best situation for an alleged miscreant is to be out of sight and out of mind. That's the opposite of what happens to lawmakers during a session.
If this was a closed file, the investigators might've been able to answer more of those lingering questions that would have allowed the Legislature to begin a new session without this latest distraction. Some examples:
Who sent the messages in Schwertner's name? Did Schwertner send it or did someone else?
What device were the messages sent from? Who does it belong to?
Where's the full report?
Why wasn't this done in a way that could clear his name? And if that's on him, as the investigator implies, why didn't he cooperate and provide information to make his innocence apparent?
The investigation said Schwertner gave the complainant his card with a cell phone number purchased from Hushed, an application that allows users to communicate via cell phones without revealing their actual cell phone numbers. Why?
Why would someone going to that extent to disguise themselves give away their password for Hushed to a third party?
Who is this third party (if there is one at all)? Why won't Schwertner identify the person? Why did he or she have access to his Hushed account? Was that person's phone used to send the messages?
"This unfortunate matter is now closed," Schwertner said in a written statement sent to news media after the executive summary of Sutton's report was made public. He got one letter wrong in that sentence, using a "W" where a "T" would be more apt.
This unfortunate matter is not closed.
See here for the background. As I suggested, it's hard to escape the conclusion that Schwertner is covering up for somebody, which raises even more questions. Ramsey is right that this matter is not closed, and that these and other questions will linger, not just over Schwertner but the whole Senate, throughout the session. It's just that Schwertner has already faced the voters – who clearly did not have all of the information they could have had – and with the decline of the Capitol press corps, there's not much of a mechanism for keeping a spotlight on these questions. There's still a story out there, and I'm sure someone will continue to pursue it. But unless and until someone finds and publishes answers to these questions, this unfortunate matter will remain dormant. For Sen. Schwertner's purposes, that's good enough.
El Nino 2018
Here it comes.
Houstonians can expect more rain than usual — and possibly street flooding — this winter, thanks to El Niño.
The National Weather Service forecasts an 80 percent chance for a weak to moderate El Niño this winter, starting around Christmas and lasting through February. In Houston, El Niño means a warmer and wetter winter that could have more severe storms and a higher risk of localized flooding.
Last week's storm, which brought high winds and street flooding to the region, is indicative of an El Niño storm, said Ken Prochazka, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Houston.
"After our wet fall, the ground out there is saturated," Prochazka said. "When we don't get a chance to dry out, we're more likely to have runoff and street flooding."
El Niño occurs when the temperature of the Pacific Ocean off the coast of South America is warmer than usual. The warm Pacific water affects the atmosphere and causes changes in weather patterns around the world.
In the U.S., El Niño accelerates the North American jet stream, pushing storms from the Pacific across the the country at a faster speed. Storms can move across Texas every three to four days during El Niño, dropping more rain than usual.
Houston typically sees 3.6 inches of rain in January. El Niño can bring more rain than that, Prochazka said.
Houston last saw El Niño-related storms between 2014 and 2016. The city saw particularly strong El Niño storms in 1997 and 1998. El Niño, which occurs unpredictably, can last for a couple of years, Prochazka said.
It is what it is. All we can do is try to be ready for it.
Here comes the latest school finance report
I figure the smart money is always on efforts like this to fail, but you never know.
After hours of discussion Wednesday, a state panel studying school finance stripped its final report of language that blamed the state for inadequate education spending — and that added urgency to a need for more money to improve student performance.
The original version of the report, unveiled last Tuesday, included stronger language that held the state accountable for the lack of education funding and urged lawmakers to immediately inject more than a billion dollars of new funding into public schools. Scott Brister, the panel's chairman and a former Texas Supreme Court justice, led the charge to make those changes, which he said would be more palatable to lawmakers and keep Texas from being sued in the future.
"I do have a problem several places where it says our school system has failed. I do think that's asking for trouble," he said.
Some lawmakers and educators on the panel pushed back before agreeing to compromise.
"I think we have failed our schools and we haven't funded them, in my view, adequately or equitably," responded state Rep. Dan Huberty, R-Houston, who chairs the House Public Education Committee.
Despite the conflict, the 13-member commission unanimously approved more than 30 recommendations on Wednesday aimed at boosting public education funding, improving student performance, cleaning up a messy funding distribution system — and providing property tax relief for Texans.
A final report will be sent to lawmakers, who are convening next month amid calls from state leadership to overhaul a long-embattled school finance system. Gov. Greg Abbott supported the panel's vote in a statement Wednesday afternoon: "Today's school finance commission report made clear that the state must reform the broken Robin Hood system and allocate more state funding to education. This session, we will do just that."
Among the recommendations the commission plans to send to lawmakers are:
$100 million a year to school districts that want to develop their own teacher evaluation metrics and tie pay to performance. The total amount available should increase $100 million each year until it reaches $1 billion.
Up to $150 million to incentivize school districts to offer dual language programs, which instruct students in both English and Spanish, and to improve their dyslexia programs.
$800 million to incentivize school districts to improve students' reading level in early grades and to succeed in college or a career after graduating high school.
$1.1 billion to improve education for low-income students, with school districts that have a higher share of needy students getting more money.
Create a new goal of having 60 percent of third-grade students reading on or above grade level and 60 percent of high school seniors graduating with a technical certificate, military inscription, or college enrollment without the need for remedial classes.
Cap local school district tax rates in order to offer property tax relief and a small amount of funding for schools — a proposal from Abbott.
No extra funding for special education programs until the state has completed overhauling those programs in line with a federal mandate.
The report hasn't been published yet, so this is all we know. I don't see any reason to trust Greg Abbott, who is more interested in cutting property taxes than in providing schools with the resources they need, and of course Dan Patrick will be heavily involved in whatever happens. I think the commission has generally good motives and for the most part the ideas are fine, but we could do a lot more, and that's before we address the huge need for special ed funding. It's all a matter of our priorities, and of our view of what "fixing" school finance looks like. The Chron has more.
Is there a better way to predict flooding?
This startup thinks so.
An artificial intelligence startup now says it can provide that warning. The company, One Concern, has announced that it can predict whether your block will flood — and if so, by how much — five days in advance of an incoming storm.
Founded by Stanford University graduates, the startup has launched a flood forecasting product called Flood Concern meant to give leaders hyperlocal predictions of where flooding will occur, allowing them to swiftly prepare and respond. High on its roster of potential clients is the Houston area, which lost over a hundred lives and suffered billions in damage last year during Hurricane Harvey.
The startup has begun approaching city officials and leaders in Houston's private sector about bringing the technology to the region.
"They're interested in multiple use cases, all the way from planning to responding," One Concern CEO Ahmed Wani said of the discussions. Texas A&M University has already partnered with One Concern in anticipation of the potential benefits for the region.
"The use of artificial intelligence is potentially a game changer," said Tony Knap, associate director of A&M's Superfund Research Center. "It's a different way of looking at things."
Artificial intelligence allows computers to look for patterns from past events to predict what will happen in the future. Predictions become more accurate as the system collects more data — the Superfund Research Center is contributing data about hazardous chemicals so that a flood analysis can also understand potential health concerns.
"The aim is to get the prediction correct," Knap said. "And artificial intelligence is something that we don't use and they do. So if that can inform the model … it's good for Houston."
Eric Berger, a meteorologist whose forecasts on the Space City Weather website drew 1 million page views a day during Hurricane Harvey, said he could imagine artificial intelligence providing realistic worst-case scenarios for incoming storm systems. But he is skeptical of One Concern's claim that it can predict flooding on a block-by-block basis.
To illustrate his point, he described a storm he was tracking that Tuesday afternoon that would hit Southeast Texas Friday night. Most of the region would likely see 2 to 4 inches of rain, but certain pockets could receive up to 8 — and those pockets would have a chance of flooding.
But where would they be?
"Three days before this heavy rainfall event, we can say this area is ripe for rain," Berger said. "We could say that Harris County is at a greater risk than Galveston County. But to specify it even on a city-by-city basis is not possible. … There's not the underlying meteorological data to support it."
Here's One Concern's press release. As the story notes, Google is working in this space as well, though their claims aren't as bold. I tend to agree with Berger that the data isn't there for predictions this granular, but I like the direction they're going, and I hope they can provide some value now, even if it's not quite what they hope to achieve.
Time for the biennial annotation of gambling bills that will not pass
This one is creative, I'll give it that.
Rep. Joe Deshotel
A Texas lawmaker has proposed subsidizing the state's underfunded windstorm insurance and flooding assistance by building casinos in coastal counties.
State Rep. Joe Deshotel filed the bill on Dec. 7 to cover the cost of the Texas Insurance Agency by proposing to tax licensed casinos, Galveston County Daily News reported . The measure would give the Texas Lottery Commission the authority to issue six licenses to operate casinos across six counties.
The proposal would generate an 18 percent gaming tax of a casino's revenue and use some of the money to ensure the windstorm association has sufficient capital to cover its insured deficits and operating expenditures.
Deshotel, who first filed a similar bill in 2015, said this latest iteration would send part of the tax to a flooding assistance trust fund. The governor's office could then use the trust fund for emergency assistance during natural disasters like Hurricane Harvey.
"Just like the lottery, where a portion of funds go to public education, this is a need that's underfunded," Deshotel said. "If the lottery helps education, we can help with the problem of windstorm, which is disproportionately paid for by the coastal counties."
It's not just a bill – Rep. Deshotel has filed HJR 36, a "constitutional amendment authorizing the operation of casino gaming in certain coastal areas of this state by licensed persons to provide additional money for residual windstorm insurance coverage and catastrophic flooding assistance in the coastal areas". There is a bill as well, HB494, since all constitutional amendments need enabling legislation to go with it. That means of course that this needs a two-thirds majority in both chambers to pass, and I don't think I need to tell you what the odds are of that. Tying it to revenue for windstorm insurance is brilliant, but it still has to overcome the fact that some people oppose gambling in any form, and some people who support gambling only support it in the form of slot machines at horse-race stadia. A good idea, and perhaps a sign that we'll see some Is This The Year That Texas Finally Expands Gambling stories (spoiler alert: no, this is not the year), but not much more than that.
Precinct analysis: Collier versus Beto
The Trib looks at some numbers.
Rep. Beto O'Rourke
Mike Collier, the Democrat who ran for and lost the race for lieutenant governor last month, wasn't the star of his party's ticket. But by some measures, Collier did better in this year's general election than Beto O'Rourke.
In 171 of the state's 254 counties — counties O'Rourke famously visited during the campaign — Collier got more votes than the Democrat at the top of the ticket.
In terms of wins and losses, it wasn't enough of a difference to make a difference: Texas Republicans won all of the statewide races. With this year's victories, they've now done that a dozen times in a row, starting in 1996.
But the Democrats lost by smaller margins than usual. The state didn't turn blue, as some of their most exuberant partisans had hoped, but it edged toward the purple territory that marks a swing state. Texas hasn't had margins like this at the top of the ballot since 1998 — 20 years ago.
Overall, O'Rourke got more votes than Collier (or any other statewide Democrat) — more than 4 million of them in the general election. Justin Nelson, the party's candidate for attorney general, got 3.9 million — coming in with 147,534 fewer votes than O'Rourke. Collier and Kim Olson, who ran for agriculture commissioner, weren't far behind him.
O'Rourke beat U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, his Republican opponent, in 32 counties; by that measure, he outdid his Democratic ticket-mates. Nelson won in 31 counties, Olson in 30, Collier in 29 and so on. Lupe Valdez, the party's candidate for governor, won in just 20 counties, the least of any of the statewide non-judicial candidates.
I remain fascinated by the fascination with the smaller counties, where a tiny fraction of the vote comes from in Texas. I mean, every vote counts, but you don't get bonus points for winning a particular county. (Anyone remember the old Continental Basketball Association, where teams could win a point in the standings for outscoring their opponent in a single quarter? Politics isn't like that.) Because the story doesn't provide any more context about this Collier-versus-Beto comparison, I put together a spreadsheet that did the dirty work for me. Here are the top 21 counties in which Mike Collier got more votes than Beto O'Rourke:
County    C - B   P - C  Tot Vot
BOWIE       584    -975   59,618
ANGELINA    567  -1,041   51,751
UPSHUR      526    -749   27,708
PANOLA      445    -575   16,392
GREGG       438    -944   69,893
TOM GREEN   437  -1,305   66,826
CASS        416    -450   20,119
LAMAR       403    -612   31,591
VAN ZANDT   396    -633   36,982
RUSK        334    -647   31,242
HARRISON    327    -636   44,462
HOCKLEY     281    -428   13,582
CARSON      264    -364    4,263
HUTCHINSON  247    -398   13,547
CHEROKEE    243    -327   27,949
FREESTONE   236    -351   11,978
HOPKINS     235    -392   22,706
LIMESTONE   235    -365   13,621
WOOD        234    -262   30,065
GRAY        231    -304   12,493
RANDALL     221  -1,304   87,827
The column "C – B" represents the difference between Mike Collier's vote total and Beto O'Rourke's vote total in the given county. The "P – C" column is the same thing for Dan Patrick and Ted Cruz. In every single one of these 171 counties, the Patrick-Cruz difference was bigger than the Collier-Beto difference. In other words, everywhere that Mike Collier picked up more votes than Beto, Dan Patrick had even fewer votes than Ted Cruz.
Before we talk about what that might mean, let me mention the last column in the table above. It represents the total number of registered voters in that county. I went to 21 on this list so I could include Randall County, which is easily the largest of the counties among the 171. Not surprisingly in the least, all of this occurred in the smaller counties. To put it in a bit of perspective, Collier garnered an extra 19,837 votes over Beto in these 171 counties combined. In Travis (21,534), Bexar (22,260), Harris (24,487), and Dallas (26,822), Beto's vote total exceeded Collier's by more than that. Like I said, there's no bonus for winning a county.
So why did Collier do better in these places than Beto, despite Beto's omnipresent campaign? Well, not to put too fine a point on it, but Ted Cruz also campaigned, and I'm betting he ran more ads and had more of a (borrowed from Greg Abbott) field game out in the rural areas than Dan Patrick did. While many Republicans in urban and suburban counties abandoned Cruz with vigor, their country cousins may have been less willing to put the Senate in play for the Democrats. Maybe in these parts of the state, it was Dan Patrick who was the least-liked Republican on the ballot. Justin Nelson also outperformed Beto in a bunch of counties, but he did so in 149 of them, and the difference was as much as 100 votes in only two of them, Van Zandt and Hopkins. It's worth thinking about these things, but it's the sort of task you should give to a summer intern, not a senior analyst. It's interesting, but in the end it's not that big a deal.
And now we move forward with Prop B
No other option.
Mayor Sylvester Turner
Mayor Sylvester Turner said Wednesday his administration is moving forward to implement the voter-approved charter amendment granting Houston firefighters equal pay to police of corresponding rank and seniority, though the city has not yet determined when firefighters will begin receiving increased paychecks or how the charter amendment will impact individual city departments.
Turner's administration plans to lay off hundreds of city employees, including firefighters and police officers, to cover the cost of paying firefighters on par with police officers, a move city officials say will amount to a 29 percent raise costing the city upwards of $100 million annually.
The mayor said he did not know when the city would begin layoffs, but indicated to reporters Wednesday that it likely would take several months to put Proposition B into effect.
"I don't want anybody to operate under the assumption that even as we move forward to the implementation that checks are going to start flowing in January," Turner said. "It will take some time."
Asked why the city is only now beginning to put Proposition B into effect, Turner said his administration did not take action while the temporary restraining order was in place from Nov. 30 until Tuesday. Proposition B passed Nov. 6 with 59 percent of the vote.
The fire union, meanwhile, has sought to negotiate a new contract with Turner that would allow the city to phase in Proposition B. Fire union president Marty Lancton has cast Turner's refusal to return to the table as vindictive, and said after state District Judge Randy Wilson's ruling Tuesday that the mayor could implement the amendment or "pick up the phone and call firefighters so we can work toward a solution that implements the will of the voters in the best possible way."
Asked Wednesday about the union's negotiation offer, Turner did not indicate he has was any closer to sitting down with the firefighters, saying that doing so would go against "what people wanted" when they approved Proposition B. The firefighters, who have contended that the police union's lawsuit is aimed at circumventing the will of the voters, say it is possible to arrive at "a solution that implements the will of the voters in the best possible way."
The mayor previously has said the city could not phase in Proposition B, and since has accused firefighters of attempting to confuse the issue by calling for negotiations while the lawsuits play out in the courts.
See here for the background. I don't know what else there is to say at this point. It's not clear what happens from here, but I'm pretty sure no one is going to like it.
The Russia-Texas-secession connection
So many people got played.
A sprawling Russian disinformation campaign aimed at influencing the 2016 elections found success with social media accounts promoting the idea of Texas secession, according to a report commissioned by the U.S. Senate that was released Monday.
When it came to stirring up social divisions and exerting political influence, two accounts about the Lone Star State proved especially effective: a "Heart of Texas" Facebook page and a @rebeltexas account on Instagram.
Both accounts were created and managed by the Internet Research Agency, a Russian company that's been characterized by the U.S. government as a "troll farm" and was indicted by a federal grand jury.
Heart of Texas, which amassed hundreds of thousands of followers on Facebook, promoted an image of the state as a land of barbecue and guns while sharing posts that attacked immigration.
The page had the most shares of all IRA Facebook accounts, at 4.8 million, according to the report, which was prepared by an Austin-based company, New Knowledge.
"Heart of Texas visual clusters included a wide swath of shapes of Texas, landscape photos of flowers, and memes about secession and refugees," the report said.
Posts by the Facebook page cited in the report include a truck with a giant state flag and a photo of Texas wildflowers as well as another laying out the "economic grounds for Texas secession." The page also shared memes criticizing immigration.
You can read that report here. The extent of this activity is mind-boggling, and in just about any other context we'd call it highly aggressive, if not warlike. Every now and then I see one of these yahoos with a "Secede" sticker on their car, and I wonder if they have any idea. We're doing this to ourselves, that's the really scary part.
The Texas Progressive Alliance is busy decorating for Mueller-mas as it brings you this week's roundup.
Metro moving forward on 2019 referendum
I'm ready for it.
The Metropolitan Transit Authority is expected to ask voters next fall for more than $3 billion in borrowing authority to implement its next wave of transit projects.
The 20-year plan laid out by Metro officials includes roughly 20 more miles of light rail, 75 miles of bus rapid transit and 110 miles of two-way HOV lanes along area freeways.
The plan, based on studies and public feedback, focuses on beefing up service in core areas where buses and trains already are drawing riders and connecting suburban residents and jobs in those areas.
"We are making sure what we are doing here in the metro service area blends into the region," Metro CEO Tom Lambert said. "How do we make sure we are putting together an environment and place that connects one mode of transportation to other modes of transportation."
The overall price tag for the plan is $7.5 billion, more than half of which would be funded via state and federal transportation monies.
Unlike previous Metro capital plans that spent roughly $1 billion in local money on the Red Line light rail, its northern extension and the Green and Purple lines, the current plan would spend more on buses — specifically bus rapid transit — along key routes where officials believe better service can connect to more places and, in turn, lure more riders. The estimated cost of about 75 miles of bus rapid transit is $3.15 billion.
Officials believe BRT, as it is called, delivers the same benefits as rail, but at less cost with more flexibility, giving Metro the ability to alter service to meet demand. For riders, it would be a rail-like experience and different from buses that operate on set timelines.
"If you can get a service people can bank on and count on, you don't need a schedule," Lambert said.
BRT operates similar to light rail with major station stops along dedicated lanes used only by the buses, though they may share some streets with automobile traffic. The region's first foray into bus rapid transit is under construction along Post Oak in the Uptown area. Service is scheduled to start in early- to mid-2020.
The MetroNext plan calls for at least five bus rapid transit projects:
Interstate 45 — which is poised for its own massive rebuild by TxDOT — from downtown to Bush Intercontinental Airport
Interstate 10 from downtown to the proposed Texas Bullet Train terminal at Loop 610 and U.S. 290
Gessner from Metro's West Little York park and ride to its Missouri City park and ride
Extending Uptown's planned rapid transit to the Gulfton Transit Center
A proposed fifth BRT is a revised version of the University Line light rail that Metro proposed and then shelved because of a lack of progress and intense opposition. The line, which some consider the most-needed major transit line in the region, would tie the University of Houston and Texas Southern University areas to downtown and then the Uptown area.
Since becoming chair of Metro in 2016, [Carrin] Patman has said the downtown-to-Uptown connection is the missing link in major transit investment within Loop 610. However, she has stressed that light rail may not be the best mode.
Though officials have pivoted from trains to buses with much of the plan, nearly $2.5 billion in new rail is being proposed, including the extension of both the Green Line along Harrisburg and the Purple Line in southeast Houston to Hobby Airport. The airport legs alone are estimated to cost close to $1.8 billion even though they are expected to draw fewer riders than any of the bus rapid transit routes.
All the details, which as Metro Chair Patman notes can and will change as the community dialogue continues, can be found at MetroNext.org. A press release with a link to Patman's "State of Metro" presentation last week is here. I will of course be keeping an eye on this, and I definitely plan to interview Patman about the referendum once we get a little farther into the year. And let's be clear, even if I didn't have other reasons to dislike Bill King, I don't want him to ever have any power over Metro. If we want to have any shot at having decent transit in this city, he's the last person we want as Mayor.
Restraining order lifted on firefighter pay referendum
Back to the planning stage.
A state district judge on Tuesday dissolved a temporary restraining order blocking implementation of the voter-approved charter amendment granting pay parity to Houston firefighters and denied further attempts by the city and police union to delay the measure.
State District Judge Randy Wilson, ruling in favor of the Houston Professional Fire Fighters Association, decided that voters were informed of the amendment's price tag — more than $100 million a year — before the election and approved it anyway. The measure, appearing on the November ballot as Proposition B, passed with 59 percent of the vote.
"While this Court is sensitive to the budget difficulties the Pay-Parity Amendment will produce, the Houston voters decided they would rather have pay parity," Wilson wrote.
The latest ruling comes more than two weeks after the HPOU sued the fire union and city over the parity measure, contending the amendment, which would tie firefighter pay to that of police of corresponding rank and experience, is unconstitutional because it conflicts with a provision of state law requiring firefighters to receive comparable pay to that of private sector employees.
Wilson, ruling that the amendment does not conflict with state law, indicated the city had contradicted its argument in a separate case by claiming that no private sector jobs are comparable to those of firefighters.
The lawsuit has been underway since Nov. 30, when the police union filed the suit against the fire union and the city, and [Judge Kristen] Hawkins granted a temporary restraining order.
The city later filed a cross-claim against the fire union, a remedy available to defendants seeking to take legal action against a co-defendant. In its claim, the city argued that the charter amendment "directly conflicts with the collective bargaining process and guidelines for firefighter compensation" laid out in the Texas Local Government Code, and therefore is invalid. Ultimately, the police union and city sought an injuction and stay on the parity amendment.
As the lawsuit has played out, the separate case referenced by Wilson — filed by the fire union against the city after contract talks stalled last year — has reached Texas' 14th Court of Appeals.
See here for the background, and here for the Mayor's statement. Neither the HPOU nor the city plans to appeal at this time, so as things stand the city will need to figure out how to move forward with Prop B while the litigation plays out, as was the case with Renew Houston. It's not going to get any more cordial from here, that much I know.
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